At 7, she attempted suicide. At 15, she ran away with drugs. Now, she has a second chance

Hope Academy student Sophi Herrick, 16, talks about her experience coming to Hope Academy recovery school to work toward sobriety while completing her education, at the Fairbanks addiction treatment center in Indianapolis. (August 2017)
Jenna Watson/IndyStar

Buy Photo

Sophi Herrick, 16, listens during a science class led by Boyd Gilbert at Hope Academy, a recovery school at Fairbanks Alcohol and Drug Addiction Treatment Center, Indianapolis, Ind., Tuesday, August 22, 2017. The fully accredited, tuition-free public charter school provides students with addiction recovery resources while working toward graduation.(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)Buy Photo

Around 9 p.m. on a school night, idling outside of Warren Central High School, Daniel Herrick slowly realized his teenage daughter wasn't going to walk out of the building.

Sophi said she had band practice until 8 p.m. It took Herrick about an hour to realize she lied. She was on the run.

This, he says, remains the scariest moment of his life — and he spent more than 20 years on the night shift as an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer.

***

That night in September 2016 was just the first time Sophi ran. Over the following eight months she would disappear three times, usually for a couple of weeks. Once she hid for a couple of months.

At first her dad alerted all her friends and family, including her two older brothers, with a Facebook post that got something like 3,000 shares, Sophi said. It was a shocking turn for the talented bass guitarist and Advanced Placement student.

By the third time, Herrick only told her grandmother and a few of his fellow officers.

At times, Sophi ended up homeless, breaking into apartments with her friends. The 16-year-old was using heroin and methamphetamine, but also experimenting with prescription pain medications, acid, crack — "basically anything that someone would put on the table." Once she nodded off and spent the night sleeping on the curb.

Eventually, a police officer would recognize her and she'd be returned home with track marks and bruises up her arms.

This was true for Sophi, even though she said Warren Central tried to help. After missing most of the fall semester, she ended up transferring to Hope Academy, the only school in the state accredited specifically to help teens overcome substance abuse while working toward a regular diploma.

By the time she wound up at Hope, Sophi had been using for about five years.

She started with marijuana at 10 years old. Someone in the neighborhood gave it to her. It would be just the first in a seemingly long line of offers introducing her to new substances.

Experts say this kind of early substance abuse often leads to devastating addictions in young adults — like heroin or other opioids — contributing to the country's public health crisis. More people in Indiana now die from drug poisoning than in car accidents.

"There’s not an opiate addict that I’ve talked to between 18 and 23 that didn’t start at marijuana and alcohol," said Rachelle Gardner, director of Hope Academy.

Sharon Levy, child substance abuse expert and director of the Adolescent Substance use and Addiction Program program in Boston, said she's seen hundreds of teenagers struggling with addiction, and they typically start by using alcohol and marijuana. That behavior makes it more likely they'll meet someone who will introduce them to opioids, she said.

"The younger you are, the more vulnerable you are," Levy said

This is a more common pathway, she said, than the common narrative of a teen becoming addicted because of a prescribed painkiller for an injury. Most often, kids abusing pills are getting or stealing them from someone else, she said.

Gardner sees Indiana's public charter school as a preventative attack on the opioid crisis — treating high schoolers with substance abuse problems before they find opioids or develop full-blown psychical, mental and emotional addictions.

For Sophi, the depression started before the drugs. She attempted suicide for the first time when she was in second grade.

She didn't really know how it worked, she said, but she remembers looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, holding a knife. She would leave sticky notes for her parents saying she wanted to run away or didn't want to live anymore.

When she was 12 some of the older kids on the bus offered her harder drugs, she said. In seventh grade, she started selling and taking pills. Meanwhile, her parents were trying to combat her depression with counseling, private therapy and prescribed medications.

She started doing meth her freshman year, skipping classes at Warren to get high in the woods.

"I wanted to be bad. I wanted to be cool," Sophi said. "I’ve never been afraid of the consequences of drugs."

On a path to addiction

As a police officer, Herrick saw firsthand how quickly playing with alcohol, marijuana, meth or opioids can turn into a life-ruining addiction. He felt Sophi had a better chance at Hope.

There, she was required to join a 12-step program, keep a sponsor and submit to random bimonthly drug tests. She'd be one of about 25 students instead of one of 3,700. And the public charter came at the right price: free.

"Sophi was not an addict," Herrick said. "But she was going to be. She was doing enough stuff that it wouldn’t have been long."

Herrick didn't have much research to lean on — few studies on recovery schools have been done, in part because there weren't many until about 10 years ago, said Andy Finch, who co-founded the Association of Recovery Schools.

Hope Academy opened in 2006 and is one of only 40 recovery schools nationwide, according to the association.

Still, these schools have shown positive effects. Finch evaluated more than a dozen recovery schools in 2009. He found the percentage of participants who said they currently used alcohol, marijuana or drugs dropped from 90 percent to 7 percent after starting at the school.

More than 70 percent of the students said they were performing better academically in their recovery schools, the study showed, and nearly 60 percent said they felt better emotionally.

When Sophi showed up in January she wasn't ready. She was still doing meth on the weekends and paying to use a friend's urine for the tests. It wasn't long before she relapsed, disappeared a few weeks before finals.

When she was delivered home this time, her father broke down crying.

"He just told me, ‘I don’t need you to die,'" Sophi said. "‘I shouldn’t have to bury my 16-year-old daughter.’" He said he'd never give up, never stop looking, never stop being her dad. "He’s thrown everything away so many times. He trusted me, like, he would build his trust back up, and I would just crush it again."

Something clicked.

After that, Hope became the second chance Sophi needed. She returned with three days left in the school year, arms wrapped in bandages and long sleeves.

A journey

By policy, Hope Academy doesn't expel students for relapsing. It's part of the process, Gardner said. She related it to diabetes, and doing well for a while but then breaking down and eating some chocolate cake. Recovery isn't a perfectly straight path.

Instead of expulsion, staff spent extra time with Sophi, working to unpack what triggers lead her back to drugs. Often addiction in young people goes in hand with a social or emotional dependency, Gardner said. Maybe they need it to talk to that cute guy, or do well on that test, or help their anxiety.

"The whole time that they are justifying the excuses they are using, their brain is changing," Garner said. Until the brain is fully developed around 22 years of age, it's rewiring to think it can't cope without the drug, she said.

Hope Academy's goal is to show students a pattern driving their behavior. Then staff can help institute new coping mechanisms to rewire their brain.

Walking around Hope Academy with Sophi, on the second floor of Fairbanks' Recovery building, feels like walking through locker-lined halls of a typical, albeit small, high school. Teens move from room to room at the sound of the bell. It takes a careful eye to see the oddities.

Buy Photo

Sophi Herrick, 16, reads a chapter from "Silent Spring" during a science class led by Boyd Gilbert at Hope Academy, a recovery school at Fairbanks Alcohol and Drug Addiction Treatment Center, Indianapolis, Ind., Tuesday, August 22, 2017. The fully accredited, tuition-free public charter school provides students with addiction recovery resources while working toward graduation.(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)

Instead of a common lesson depicted on the wall in colorful paper cutouts, there's a timeline of each students' sobriety. They move their token to track their progress every week. Sophi just marked three months. Marijuana was the last habit she broke.

The bathrooms are locked, and a teacher with a key stands in front of the door when a student asks permission to use it. "We do bad things in the bathrooms," Sophi explains with a smile, trying to soften the conversation with humor.

She's wearing the required uniform — a collared shirt with khaki pants — paired with subtle purple in her hair, smokey eye makeup and black nail polish that she absentmindedly picks at when she speaks in front of a group. At lunch she drinks a massive Styrofoam cup of coffee, holding onto it with both hands.

There are no bandages on her wrists. Only scars. If asked a few months ago, Sophi would have said she continued to run away because she wanted to have fun. Not until recently did she admit to herself it was about getting high. And it was even more recently, after conversations with the school's recovery counselor, that she saw how getting high was her coping mechanism for the darkness in her life.

A devastating loss

By fifth grade, Sophi had attempted suicide twice more. That's when her mother, Angela, knew she needed more help than she was getting from the school counselor and took her to therapy. Angela was an anchor for Sophi, too. Someone always there, ready to listen.

Then two years ago, Angela suffered a severe asthma attack at home. Sophi's dad was starting the car to head the hospital when Angela stopped breathing. He performed CPR.

Medics were able to restart Angela's heart, Daniel Herrick said, but she was in a coma for three days before she died.

Sophi witnessed it all.

"Sophi was the strong one of the house," Herrick said. "She kind of kept us all going. About nine, ten months after, when me and the boys had kind of gotten it together, Sophi lost it. I kind of think that she held it together as long as she needed to, and then she just went off the deep end on us."

The first thing that's made a difference, Herrick said, is Hope.

Meant to be small

Buy Photo

Hope Academy is a recovery school at Fairbanks Alcohol and Drug Addiction Treatment Center, Indianapolis, Ind., Tuesday, August 22, 2017. The fully accredited, tuition-free public charter school provides students with addiction recovery resources while working toward graduation.(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)

In most classes, Sophi sits with one or two other students. The school is so small it's often exempt from state reports, such as ISTEP scores, in an effort to protect students' privacy.

Hope is also not required to report a state grade, in part because students transfer in and out so frequently, Gardner said. Plus, its students typically need to recover credits after falling behind, like Sophi.

In the 2015-16 school year, students at Hope completed more than 90 percent of their attempted credits — which Gardner lists as proof of the school's success.

According to the state, 65 percent, or 13 students, of Hope's senior class graduated in 2015. The percentages change widely from year to year depending on the class size. The year before, 57 percent, or eight students, graduated.

Six of the 14 graduates in 2015 went on to enroll in college, according to the Indiana College Readiness report. Hope works to pair graduates with other addiction recovery supports before graduation. Gardner said beyond that, the school has a difficult time tracking them.

The charter strives to be small, capping enrollment at 60 students. But currently, Hope is only meeting about a third of its potential capacity.

If there are so many kids dealing with substance abuse and recovery schools can help, why are there so few students and schools?

The first answer: money. Building in so many supports, including a paid staff of teachers and counselors, for a small number of students, is expensive. Gardner said Hope receives about $14,000 per student each year through the state school funding formula, but it costs the school closer to $22,000 per student.

Plus, in Indiana, that funding is based on the enrollment on a single day in September. Students that transfer to the school after that date are not included in the formula.

Hope relies heavily on its partnership with Fairbanks' Alcohol & Drug Treatment Center to continue employing at least four teachers and recovery staff. During the 2015-16 school year, the school needed a $360,000 donation and a $255,653 transfer from Fairbanks, according to its annual charter report. (The Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, which is supporting IndyStar's series on the opioid crisis, is a separate entity from the Fairbanks treatment center. Also, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation does not raise money for the Fairbanks treatment center.)

But that doesn't explain Hope's small numbers, which is why Finch and Gardner add a second answer: stigma.

"A lot of people don’t think that kids have issues because we are just having fun," Sophi said. "Kids need someone to tell them that they are screwing up because (drinking or using drugs is) so romanticized. They think that it’s a normal thing."

Making up for lost time

In August, before her first class of the afternoon, Sophi begins shifting around the books in her drawstring Hope Academy bag. She pulls out the "Big Book," a well-worn and highlighted instruction manual for Alcohol Anonymous' 12 Step program. Then comes "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Crucible." She isn't reading them for an assignment. Her English teacher loaned her the classics, often studied in college-level classes, because she wanted something to read for fun.

Sophi might not like school, but she's unquestionably smart. When she returned to Hope she made a deal. She'd show up if she could graduate early.

Buy Photo

Sophi Herrick, 16, reads a passage during a history class led by Jordan Mills at Hope Academy, a recovery school at Fairbanks Alcohol and Drug Addiction Treatment Center, Indianapolis, Ind., Tuesday, August 22, 2017. Herrick plans to graduate in the spring. The fully accredited, tuition-free public charter school provides students with addiction recovery resources while working toward graduation.(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)

She spent the summer making up classes she missed and is now taking extra advanced courses online. She's earning mostly A's and is on track to graduate weeks after turning 17. Then she's got her sights set on Ivy Tech Community College to become an IT or X-ray technician. She hasn't decided yet.

The fact she has a plan and focus brings a smile to her dad's face. Sitting in an east-side Steak n' Shake after drinking a couple cups of coffee (like father, like daughter) he proudly swipes through pictures of his family — Sophi, his sons and late wife — on his phone.

He's mentioned a couple times that he will be picking Sophi up from school. This time, Herrick is sure she'll be there.

IndyStar’s “State of Addiction: Confronting the Opioid Crisis in Indiana” series is made possible through the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, a nonprofit foundation working to advance the vitality of Indianapolis and the well-being of its people.